I use Chrome for regular stuff with personal bookmarks such as Facebook, Youtube, Reddit, etc. Then I use Firefox for school-related work, with a huge library of bookmarks ranging from Wikipedia to Google search tools and other academic tools.

At 12/13/12 02:29 AM, AbsurdRandomness wrote:
I use Chrome for regular stuff with personal bookmarks such as Facebook, Youtube, Reddit, etc. Then I use Firefox for school-related work, with a huge library of bookmarks ranging from Wikipedia to Google search tools and other academic tools.

Same here. Also, While Chrome is very fast it does hog a lot of memory so if my PC is running slow I'll often switch to Firefox.

At 12/13/12 03:51 AM, Halberd wrote:
Internet explorer when I'm at school (so no body has any chance of seeing my Google chrome bookmarks or most viewed sites and other shit) and Google chrome everywhere else

At 12/13/12 02:38 AM, Jeffyx wrote:
I normally use Chrome, but on a rare occasion, I'll use IE 9.

Shame on you.

At 12/13/12 05:46 AM, TheColourAwsome wrote:

While Chrome is very fast it does hog a lot of memory so if my PC is running slow I'll often switch to Firefox.

I thought Firefox was the biggest memory hog of them all? I still use FF mostly though, because I can't feel any difference when it comes to RAM. And also since I have internet superspeed, there's no big difference with the speed in FF and Chrome.

There's plenty of reason to have multiple browsers at any given time. For one, it gives you perspective on which caters most to your system / preferences. You like the lightweight feeling of Chrome? Great! Use it when you want to view Youtube content and have no need for extraneous features. Enjoy Firefox' clinical approach to open source development and modification? Fantastic! Fiddle your little heart out with its about:config material. The security implications are far outweighed if the user is clever about their surfing habits and clears their registry more than once a week.

My all time favorites after extensive testing are Chromium, Chrome Canary, Comodo Dragon, Comodo IceDragon, and Firefox Nightly. To list the benefits:

Chromium is stunning with its release schedule. A BuildBot console overview gives you plenty of oversight on fixes and their stability. The browser itself is rich with simplicity, cutting edge technology, and is devoid of the Google goon privacy statements that push many away from the standard Chrome builds. Open source developmentis much appreciated, as is the stripping of bloatware that your web browsing experience shouldn't require in the first place.

Canary is a step down from the aforementioned. It fails to respect the user's privacy in some ways, but still caries a few of the features that certain websites need to run correctly. It is almost as fast as straight up Chromium, too.

Dragon is amazing for privacy, on the other hand. No other web browser has supported the stability and speed of this Chromium build, nor do they come close to the codec-support it offers. As a platform, it is severely underrated, and cuts the balls off its main competitor, SRWare Iron.

IceDragon is the same program as its WebKit counterpart, except for the fact that it is based off of the Firefox-famed Gecko layout engine.

Nightly is the Chrome Canary of the Firefox community. It provides innovative technology that few other services have yet to do. Compared to Opera Next, it is a lot more stable, and even surpasses vanilla Chrome in speed and security tests on several websites.

Firefox 100%. It's not that I really have a preference... however I have a deep routed disdain for IE, and FF is the only other browser that my fingerprint sensor on my laptop works with... so it's really just more convenient.

What browser would you recommend if I'm using an Adobe Air based SaaS (it constantly seems to blow up Chrome to the point of exasperation).

Namely, my SaaS is Radian6. And it crawwwwwwwls on Chrome if I leave it on for too long.

Chrome is supposed to be devoid of a bandwidth limiter like some browsers have. I don't see what the issue would be, however, it is worth debugging with tweaking under chrome://flags. Try enabling the SPDY/3.0 protocol to see if data packet compression is at cause, and give the 'ol HTTP Pipelining option a go for shits and giggles.

Otherwise, you could try to run CCleaner aggressively for a few days and see if the issue clears up on its own, or seek answers in updating your device driver software. Other debug fixes include running the sfc /scannow command through the elevated command prompt if you happen to be running Windows, changing your virtual memory allocation (RAM running on C: drive space), or downloading Firefox for a quick test on a separate browser. There's all kinds of stuff to do.

Otherwise, sorta on-topic, I can only recommend getting Ghostery or a more advanced anti-tracking extension if you run multiple browsers. Not only will this block several malicious third-party cookies, but also guard of JavaScript related exploits that pop up in browser-specific circumstances.

Tally-ho, I shall tinker accordingly. Hopefully I will still get to blame Radian6 in the end. :P

+ Thank you, that was quite comprehensive.

N/P

Also, never judge a browser based on its cold-start time. Firefox and its Gecko layout engine are a dependable, flexible platform if you ignore their slow firing. Memory leaks are being expunged at such a rate that it will soon be a true conqueror on the web front, much like Netscape could, and should have been during the first browser wars with IE. And since Mozilla is not actively competing with Google or other invested interests, it may have a fair shot at innovating beyond the bloat of the ACID tests. Most all tests which are, unfortunately, outdated and don't reflect what the user will actually need, so never use Acid2 or Acid3 as a real metric for comparing browser utility.

For a real trip with all Mozilla Firefox channels, right-click a site and click *view source*. From there, hover to the 3D view button on the panel that shows up towards the bottom. Rotate the resulting page around for a sweet little tool for web-designers, and quite possibly the best reason to use Firefox of all.